HSJ understands several “global digital exemplar” trusts received their first tranche of funding last week, while others were expecting the money within days.

NHS England confirmed funding was going out to all 16 acute exemplar trusts.

A spokesman said: “All 16 acute exemplars will shortly have received the first round of their funding. The programme… will help organisations deploy advanced digital technologies and develop ‘blueprints’ for others to replicate success quickly and cost efficiently.”

The seven mental health exemplar trusts, announced in January, are not included in this first funding phase, with their money expected later in the year.

The money to acute trusts is the first distribution to providers from the £1.3bn Paperless 2020 fund, announced by Jeremy Hunt in February 2016.

If all the exemplar programmes announced by the NHS England so far are fully funded, including the “fast followers” scheme, £295m will eventually be distributed to at least 43 trusts.

HSJ understands the first round of payments to acute trusts range between £2.5m and £4m each. Each trust will eventually receive up to £10m, to be matched locally, through till 2020, coming to a total of £160m.

How this will work remains to be seen, with many trusts likely to be reluctant to rip out well established clinical system to align with an exemplar’s blueprint.

At Health + Care in London last week, several digital exemplar leaders suggested partner trusts could keep their existing IT systems and import digital “best practice” that would not rely on any one system.

Related articles

Clinical teams are increasingly using WhatsApp to communicate amongst themselves but the tool is not safe in terms of data security and is ineffective in managing clinical workflow, warn Dr Harry Claireaux and colleagues

An urgent national review is underway into a mismatch of thousands of patient records that may have caused patients, including children, to miss out on disease screening and immunisation appointments, HSJ can reveal.